mothball question

[swedewolf]

Whats the difference game wize between reserve and mothball? I can see some lowering of crew quality but shouldnt it take longer time to make a mothballed vessel back in fighting order?

[southkraut]

Mothballed further lowers crew quality, takes longer to reactivate, and is significantly cheaper in upkeep.

[dorn]

Jun 4, 2019 8:12:23 GMT -6 swedewolf said:

Whats the difference game wize between reserve and mothball? I can see some lowering of crew quality but shouldnt it take longer time to make a mothballed vessel back in fighting order?

Yes, it takes much longer and without parficipating in battle it could také about year to increase crew quality to fair.

[aeson]

Whats the difference game wize between reserve and mothball?

Mothballed (MB) ships cost 20% normal upkeep and have a maximum crew quality of 'poor;' Reserve Fleet (RF) ships cost 50% normal upkeep and have a maximum crew quality of 'fair.'

When I checked in Rule the Waves 1, it appeared to take RF ships with 'fair' quality crews about four to six months to reach 'good' quality after reactivation whereas MB ships took on average ten months to reach 'good' crew quality after full reactivation (MB => AF); partial reactivation (MB => RF) resulted in the ship taking over a year to reach 'fair' crew quality. Note that these figures are for peacetime reactivation; there is a bonus to crew quality for combat experience, so if your reactivated ships are involved in battles their crew qualities will improve more rapidly. Assuming they survive, anyways; it's anecdotal, but my feeling is that a ship with a 'poor' quality crew is a serious liability in the battle line - the ship seems to have significantly worse damage control and gunnery - and even 'fair' quality crews are only minimally acceptable.

[ramjb]

If the alternative is have one more ship performing worse, or one less ship, I'm going with the former.

periods between wars can be economically challenging. If I have a couple of old BBs with smaller guns that I don't think are ready for the scrapyard yet, but are costing me 800 maintenaince per turn, those are getting mothballed. Those saved 640 per month add up really quickly and can be the difference between me getting better ships built, or more of them, or not. keeping the oldest of your battleline and battlecruisers mothballed really pushes up what you can do when tensions are low.

Once war starts activating them is no big deal. Specially if you don't expect engagements in your home areas, you can use them as fleet in being to protect them against unforeseen things, and use your other, more modern ships, elsewhere. Those being rather old ships I don't expect too much from them in battle anyway so...big deal.

[Blothorn]

I do wonder, though, if the player effect (I tend to win a substantial majority of battles--even 1:1 battles between essentially identical CLs) owes somewhat to the AI's aggressive use of reserve/mothball driving crew quality disparities. I tend to mothball my first generation or two of DDs (which will start the war on TP anyway), and whatever ships I only expect to activate for numbers to avoid blockade/reach 4:1 superiority.

[brygun]

As economical challenged Japan between war the B,BB,BC went into reserve. Carriers in reserve also hurt the air crews so I prefer to keep the CV and CVL types active fleet in the home area.

When brought active very outdated ships still add their tonnage to zone control.

As Japan I sometimes had ye olde B types sailing around the Imperial Islands freeing newer BC and BB to go off fighting.

Haven't done much mothballing. Though it does seem like a plausible use for B types that havent been converted to carriers by then.

[ramjb]

Jun 5, 2019 17:23:57 GMT -6 brygun said:

As economical challenged Japan between war the B,BB,BC went into reserve. Carriers in reserve also hurt the air crews so I prefer to keep the CV and CVL types active fleet in the home area.

If you're really starved, just drop those squadrons in an airbase so they keep their active status, and reserve the empty ships. Done it a couple times myself when I really was struggling for funds.